


fairytale

by ahtohallan_calling



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/M, tags are coming but i don't want to spoil ahead of time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:42:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26869120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahtohallan_calling/pseuds/ahtohallan_calling
Summary: “I only know one story.”“What’s it about?”“Oh, the usual. Princesses and magic and wolves and adventures and true love.”[a canonverse adjacent-ish story heavily inspired by The Princess Bride]
Relationships: Anna/Kristoff (Disney)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 33





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> i'm back i guess lol i'll update this whenever i can

“Tell me a story.”

“It’s past your bedtime.”

“Please, Papa?”

“You know I don’t tell stories. That’s Mama’s job.”

“But Mama isn’t here.”

There was a long moment of silence, followed by a heavy sigh. “No. No, she’s not.”

Knowing she had beaten him, the little girl leaned back against her pillow. “Make it a good one.”

“I only know one story.”

“What’s it about?”

“Oh, the usual. Princesses and magic and wolves and adventures and true love.”

Her eyes lit up with curiosity. “Is it good?”  
“It’s my favorite.”

“Then it’ll have to do,” she said, her imperious tone so at odds with her rosy-cheeked six-year-oldedness that he had to bite his lip to hold in a laugh. “Go on, then.”

“What’s the magic--”

“ _ Please _ .”

He laughed and leaned forward in his chair to ruffle her hair. “Alright, alright. Once upon a time--”

“Is it a true story?”

“Interrupting is awfully rude, you know.”

“So is lying.”

“It’s not lying if it’s a story. It’s different.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Then why did Mama say you were telling a story when you told her the banister fell down on its own and not because we were sliding down it again even though she said not to?”

She had him there. 

He sighed. “It’s true. All the important parts are, anyway.”

She gave him a solemn nod. “Go on, then.”

And so he did.

  
  



	2. the other princess

Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away but not so far that it was all that different from here, there was a king and queen who, like most kings and queens, wanted a child. And, fortunately for them, they had one, and she was, by most accounts, the most perfect baby ever born. While they stood on the balcony of the palace that overlooked the square, they held her up, squirmy and still a little bit pink, and the whole audience let out a collective gasp. “Her eyes,” the baker exclaimed, “even from here I can see they are the color of the purest sapphire from Sri Lanka.”

“And her hair,” added the carpenter, “she’s already got a headful of it, the precise color of the moon on a perfectly clear night in November.”

“And her  _ lungs _ ,” shouted the blacksmith, for by this time the baby had gotten quite tired of the fuss and had started to scream, “my goodness, her voice is as clear and sweet as any siren ever sang.”

As the baby grew into a toddler and then into a little girl, she only grew more beautiful, more perfect. She was quite articulate in at least three languages by the time she was two, and she was as well-mannered as any empress by three, and by four that glorious moonlit hair fell in perfect waves down to her elbows. She was, by all accounts, the most perfect princess that anyone in that kingdom or in any other had ever seen.

But she is not who our story is about.

* * *

“What?” the little girl interrupted, once more wearing a deep frown. “That’s not how it’s supposed to go.”

“Yes it is,” her father replied.

“The story is  _ always _ about a princess.”

“This one is, too. Just not  _ that _ princess.”

“I don’t think that makes much sense, Papa.”

“I can stop telling the story and just tuck you in if you’d rather.”

He had never seen her get so quiet so quickly.

* * *

Anyway, as I was saying, she’s not who our story is about. Because the year the princess turned four, her little sister was born. Her little sister-- who everyone just called “the other princess”-- had blue eyes, too, but nobody bothered shouting about them, because she never did get the whole held-up-on-a-balcony ceremony. She had the rotten luck of being born a two weeks early, which meant she made her appearance while everyone else in the castle was enjoying a high tea with the Emperor of Ice and Green and other such Lands, and as soon as the queen was done fixing her hair back, she was off to join them, leaving the princess with her third favorite maid.

The other princess was born with a headful of hair, too, but the few people who bothered to discuss it usually said it was more like the color of rust on a forgotten wheelbarrow. She, too, had a strong set of lungs, but she made far more use of them than was considered acceptable in polite society, and her hair never did quite reach her elbows, because inevitably she would get into some kind of mischief that led to it tangling so badly it had to be cut. It seemed to those who lived in the castle that every time the princess did something wonderful, the  _ other _ princess had to do something ridiculous to muck it all up. Before long, the only one who paid much mind to the other princess at all was her elder sister, who found a great deal of enjoyment in someone who didn’t make such a fuss over her for once. Her little sister never waxed poetic about her starshining hair or her dulcet singing voice or her charming manners; she didn’t let her win every game they played, she didn’t offer her the last bite of her dessert, and she  _ never _ held back from hugging the princess just because she had a bit of dirt on her dress. So long as the pair of them were together, the sisters were absolutely, wonderfully,  _ fantastically _ content.

And then, one day, Something Terrible happened. The little princess wasn’t quite sure what, exactly; to be honest, she was pretty sure she had slept through the whole thing. All anyone would tell her was, “why are you looking at me like that, Bug?”

* * *

“That’s what they said?” Bug asked, her eyebrows pulling even closer together, the solemn expression looking very out of place amidst round, rosy cheeks and tousled golden curls.

“No. That’s what I’m saying. You look confused.”

“You said Terrible like it’s an important word. But I don’t know what it means.”

“Oh! It means very bad.”

“Like that word you say when you stub your toe and Mama’s not around.”

His cheeks reddened. He didn’t think she’d heard him last week. “No, worse than that.”

“Like a really big monster eating everybody and setting the whole city on fire and--”

“Not quite that bad. More in the middle.”

She nodded, satisfied, her eyebrows returning to their normal position. “Okay. Go on.”

* * *

All anyone would tell her was, “Don’t worry about it. Go run and play, now.”

But the other princess couldn’t help but worry about it, because ever since Something Terrible had happened, her sister had been locked away in the east wing, which was so far away that every time the other princess tried to sneak in and visit her, inevitably someone caught hold of her sleeve and made her go back to her French lessons. Sometimes, if she was very very quiet, she would tiptoe past her parents’ room and hear them whispering, which was how she learned of the existence of the “Something Terrible” in the first place. 

It was strange, though, that the longer the princess was locked away, the more attention she got. The less anyone saw of her hair and her eyes and her curtsies and her calligraphy, the more the other princess had to hear about it. In fact she began to hear so much about it that she started trying her hardest to improve her  _ own _ curtsies and hair and whatever else it was that the whole court seemed to gush about. She wrote in cursive backwards and forwards and up and down until her hands cramped; she brushed her hair a hundred strokes each night, more if she’d fallen into a bush again; she curtsied and curtsied in front of a long mirror until her knees were so wobbly she could hardly stand.

Every afternoon, when she took tea with her parents, she would proudly show off whatever she’d been practicing since she’d last seen them at teatime the day before, and inevitably the response would be an absentminded, “That’s nice, dear,” before they resumed gulping their tea so they could scurry away again to the hundred places they’d rather be.

It was hard, sometimes, for the other princess not to hate her sister for it. Sometimes she swore she could actually  _ feel _ herself turning green with jealousy when she overheard the grown-ups discussing the princess’s accomplishments at length for the billionth time, and she’d run to her room and hide under the covers and cry herself silly. 

But then she would think to herself _ she must miss you, really, you know that you were  _ her _ best friend, too, so it’s not right to go on being angry at her. _

And so life went on in quite a similar fashion for years and years, until it was finally time for the princess to become the queen.

* * *

“ _ Papa _ ,” Bug said as he began to stand, “you can’t end the story there. That’s not a happy ending at  _ all _ .”

He leaned down and kissed her forehead, even as her face screwed up in a massive yawn. “It’s not ending there. But you can hardly keep your eyes open right now, so even if I told you the end, you’d sleep right through it.”

“Will you tell me the rest tomorrow?” she asked sleepily, turning over onto her side as he drew the blanket up over her shoulders.

“Of course,” he lied, knowing she would most likely have forgotten all about it by morning, that his wife was supposed to be back home tomorrow afternoon, and that, mercifully, he’d be relegated once more to only lullaby duty, the least important part of bedtime by anyone’s standards.

He was, unfortunately, wrong on all three counts.


End file.
